“It’s fine. Sometimes we’re volatile together. Bad mix.”
“I dunno. Jay likes you.”
“I’m sure…” I clamped down a giggle.
“He doesn’t talk about women. He talks about you.”
I perked up. “What does he say?”
“And you’re not interested at all, huh?”
“Women always want to know what guys said about them.” I waved off the girls as my words caught their attention.
“Let’s just say that he’s really into you.”
“I don’t know why.” But I was delighted to hear so.
“Don’t play that. You know exactly why.”
The sun shone high when we met at the lake. Jay rented a nice little boat to take out, and we enjoyed a refreshing breeze, music, and a picnic on board.
“No fishing,” he promised.
“Gutting is not romantic,” I assured him.
“Who said I was trying to get romantic?”
“What else is a date for?” I asked, trying to control my hair from whipping around my face.
“To get to know someone.”
“Oh.”
He leaned back on the railing, looking mighty fine on the sun-drenched lake. “Men haven’t treated you well before, have they?”
“Don’t psychoanalyze.”
“All right. I’ll just ask questions.”
“Boring.”
He rubbed his hands together and looked out at the water. “What do you want to do then?”
“Swim.”
“Okay.” He pulled me up from the bench. Even though he looked absolutely edible in a pair of trunks and a muscle-fitting white tee, he stripped off his shirt and revealed just how much time he spent working out.
Jay was chiseled, from a thick neck to solid biceps and pecs, defined abs, narrow waist, and a faint vein that went down from his abs to beneath his shorts. I mean…damn.
“Did you drop something?” he asked, lifting my chin.
I swatted him away. “I’ve seen better.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Ego check.”
“And you?” He waved a hand at my shirt.
“Oh, this? I was just joking about swimming. I don’t take my clothes off for everyone, you know? But, um, nice effort.” I laughed.
“Funny. But remember, this, all this right here.” He pointed down his torso. “Will be popping up in your head every time you close your eyes. And that is your fault, not mine.”
“Not likely.”
He tugged on his shirt, but I held his forearm, as nice and hard as I remembered, and turned him around. “Wait a minute, now. Let’s take a look at the back.”
“Nope.” He pulled away, but I fought with his shirt as he tried to tug it down, and insisted on taking a peek, slipping my hands up his back. Where I expected to feel the dense smoothness of a sculpted back, I felt ridges instead.
“What is that?”
“Nothing.” He pulled my hands away.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said quickly, heat creeping up my face.
He pressed his lips together. “I don’t talk about that.”
“Didn’t you think I’d see if we had gone swimming?”
“Not if I kept my back turned from you. Let it go,” he said sternly.
“You said this whole dating thing was to get to know each other.”
“So ask a question,” he said, struggling to rein his voice back from irritated to normal.
“What happened to your back?”
“Anything except that.”
I raised my brows. “Really?”
“Don’t get angry. Getting you to open up about yourself is like pulling teeth. You know far more about me than I do about you.”
“Fine, you ask a question, then,” I snapped.
“All right. Why do you get mad so easily?”
“You make me mad all the time. Next question.” I crossed my arms and looked away.
“Why are you so defensive?”
“In a world full of people who make assumptions and accusations and judgments? I don’t have a choice.”
“Am I making any of those?” he asked gently.
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“No. So stop being so defensive.”
I huffed out a breath. “I don’t know why you bother trying with me.”
“You ever think that we always fight because there’s tension between us?”
“Yes. Annoyance.”
“I mean sexual tension between us.” He was against me in a heartbeat, one hand on my lower back and the other on my neck. That combination in itself drove me wild, but having his body flush against mine, with nothing but the skimpy material of our clothes preventing full skin-on-skin contact, was infuriatingly intoxicating.
“They say the only way to release sexual tension is to get it over with,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to have sex with you, not yet,” he said gently.
“If you don’t want me, then why are your hands all over me?”
“They’re barely on you. Trust me, Liya, if I wanted to be all over you, you wouldn’t have a coherent thought left in your head.”
“Put your lips to better use, Jay, or step back,” I teased.
“You want me to want you, don’t you?”
“I know you do.”
“I hate that you think you have nothing to offer me except your body, that it’s the only thing I care about,” he said softly.
“Isn’t it? You’re always flirting, always finding a way to touch me.”
“I know what you’re doing.” He raised his brows and gazed right into my eyes, forcing me to look at him.
“Which is what?”
He brushed a knuckle across my chin. “Pushing me away by insisting that I only want you physically, and if I so much as kiss you, you’ll convince yourself that you’re right and put an end to this dating thing. I’m not falling for that.”
He leaned down, his mouth brushing against mine. “Next. Question.”
“Are you a virgin?”
He released me. “No. Are you?”
“You know I’m not.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No. How many girls have you slept with?”
“Two. How many men have you slept with?”
“Six.”
He didn’t seem bothered. “One-night stands or relationships?”
“Both. You?”
“Relationships.”
“That your mother and the community know about?”
He shrugged. “I don’t blab about it, but I’m sure they know and it doesn’t bother me. Ever been pregnant? Get an STD?”
“No and no. You? Got a girl pregnant?”
“No and no. I have one more question, and then you can end this date,” he said, pausing to stand in front of me again.
“Gladly.”
His next words were spoken carefully. “Why are you so bent on pushing me away?”
I’d been so into this rapid exchange of heated information that I spoke before thinking, “Because nice guys don’t come after me.”